Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case

“That’s awful young. Jay, I’m talking to you.”

“Yeah, what?”

I point out that Kafka didn’t make it to his forty-first birthday. Burns blinks quizzically. “Who’s that?”

“Franz Kafka, a very important writer. Died before he got famous.”

“What’d he write—songs?”

“No, Jay. Books and stories. He was an existentialist.”

“I think you busted my fuckin’ nose.”

“Guess who else checked out on the big four-oh? Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Him I heard of,” Burns says.

“Raving like a cuckoo bird, he was. No one knows what happened there. When’s your birthday?”

“October.”

“It pains me, Jay, to think you’ve had more time on this planet than John Lennon. Does that seem right?”

“Lennon?” Finally Burns looks worried. “He was forty when that asshole shot him?”

“Yep,” I say. “Same as you.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I wish I didn’t, Jay, I swear to God. I wish I could flush it out of my skull. Did you kill Jimmy Stoma?”

“No!” His head lifts off the floor and his red-rimmed eyes go wide.

“Did Cleo do it?”

“No way,” Burns says, but with less vehemence. He’s giving me a look I’ve seen many times before. Orrin Van Gelder looked at me the same way during our first interview, when he was trying to figure out precisely how much I knew.

Jay Burns, stoned keyboardist, is wondering the same thing.

“Let me up,” he says. Shortly he won’t need my permission; he’s rallying fast, shaking off the cobwebs.

“What was the name of this boat,” I ask, “before Jimmy married Cleo?”

Burns, squirming in my grip, manages a chuckle. “Floating Hospice ,”he says.

“No kidding. That’s odd.”

“Odd how?” he says irritably. “Lemme up, goddammit.”

“Odd that a guy who wanted to forget about the music business would name a boat after one of his albums.”

“Man, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about. Who said Jimmy was turned off on the business?”

“His wife.”

“Oh.”

“And she would know, right? You said so yourself.”

Before Jay Burns can buck me off, I get up. He allows me to help him to his feet, and reciprocates by retrieving my notebook from the cluttered floor. His ponytail has come undone and his oily pewter hair hangs crimped and lank. I hand him a business card listing my direct number at the Union-Register.

“What for?”

“In case you think of anything else you want to say about Jimmy.”

“Doubtful,” Burns says, though he pockets the card. “Sorry I went postal, man. It’s been a shitty week.”

“That’s okay. I’m sorry about your nose.”

“What a fucked-up way to get in Rolling Stone—the ‘ex-Slut Puppy’ who went on Jimmy Stoma’s last scuba dive.” Burns spits in the galley sink. “Ten years it’s been since they even mentioned my name.”

We go outside to the cockpit, stepping into a blessedly fresh breeze. On the dock a snow-white heron uncoils his neck in anticipation of a handout.

Burns says, “That’s Steve. Jimmy named him after Tyler on account of his skinny legs.”

“Tell me about Jimmy’s solo project.”

“How’d you—?” Then, scrambling: “Oh, the ‘album.’ It wasn’t nowhere near finished—years and years he’s been screwin’ with that damn thing down in Exuma. He built a studio in the beach house but he never puts in more’n a couple hours. Not with all that pretty blue agua. Jimmy just about lives on this boat.”

I ask Burns how many songs were finished.

“Not a one,” he says. “It was just Jimmy by hisself, dickin’ around with a Gibson.”

“No session guys? No singers?”

“Nope. Just Jimmy, like I tole ya.”

I’m always impressed that clods like Jay Burns, whipped and wasted, can somehow summon the energy to lie. It’s as if they’ve got special reserve tanks of bullshit in the basement of their brains.

“Did he have a working title?” I ask.

“About fifty of ’em. It changed every week.”

“And in the meantime, he was producing Cleo’s new album?”

Burns starts to answer but changes his mind.

“What’re you going to do now, Jay?”

“I dunno. She wants a piano on ‘Shipwrecked Heart.’ I told her I’d do it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

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